Google Print has been out a while. It’s ramping up slowly but surely — and “Perdido Street Station” is missing, yes. But there are other good SF books on there. Try a search for “alzabo book of the new sun”.

Hey, I can’t get Google Earth for free: at least right now, new downloads are “temporarily unavilable.” It does suggest I check back every day — you know, like a sucker.

Also, while most books in Google Print are in principal totally available, there isn’t an easy way to just read through a book — each search hit only turns up a few pages at a time (even if you log in). The best way to read as much of a book as you like is to continually re-search within a book to get more results (and open up a few more pages). For example, when I wanted to read a chapter of “Lacan in America,” I did a search for “Lacan” — which basically opened up the entire book, albeit not exactly in a convenient way.

But for academics, this is a godsend. Most university presses seem to be participating (or the major libraries are). We don’t need to recall popular books from each other, or wait for weeks on interlibrary loan requests for books that may only be tangentially valuable. I expect most university libraries’ reactions will be mixed, but for students and scholars, Google Print is a huge coup against the limitations of the underfunded research library.